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The last round meaningless or negative meaning matches were tasteless at the begining, players have to deliver results instead of pleasing audiences. Players have spent their whole life hard fighting for the medals, while audience's satisfactory last only 20 minutes.

Badminton gets its support from ticket-paying fans and TV rights to broadcasting. It indirectly pays for sponsorship of the Super Series (who'd want to sponsor if no one watches these games?). It's a bit short sighted (and not to mention unprofessional) to behave the way they did in the recent matches.

“It was the coach’s instruction that we wanted to stay in Cardiff and come second in the group,” said Japan’s Azusa Iwashimizu. “So it was difficult to play, but I understood his idea because it is something we needed to do in order to get a medal.”

Fair question. I'll throw a few guesses (bear in mind these aren't meant as justification or excuses)

1. It's soccer, who can tell one 90 min period of boredom from one contrived 90 min period of boredom.

2. There is a long and proud tradition in soccer of 'playing not to lose' rather than playing to win. Often resulting in 90 mins of 'keep away'.

3. Soccer is the most popular game on the planet. It's unlikely that the actions of the Japanese (women's team no less) is going to have much effect on the popularity or image of soccer as a sport.

4. It's the Japan's women's team. For a badminton analog imagine Canada throwing a doubles match to Australia. Can't really see much of a stir resulting. Now imagine Brazil and Argentina fixing a soccer match in the Olympics.

5. For this to be even a parallel to what happened in Badminton you would need to have seen Japan upon scoring a goal follow up equalizing by kicking the ball into their own goal. At least the Japanese managed to under perform without making a mockery of the game.

6. Who cares about soccer. I could probably dredge up better examples of poor sportsmanship/cheating in Olympic history. Would me doing so excuse the actions of the WD players? Is anything ok as long as you can sight a worse example?

I can surely agree with you on that part. But then you'd also have to add:

For BWF:

Every format/system/rule you set out is now your responsibility to enforce or see that the rule is not stupid, and applicable. You are answerable. You live by the sword, you die by the sword. You made the format change (even though it hasn't ever been used in Olympics, and there was no need to change), you should be punished as well. If you let the coaches walk, I can understand if the President can scapegoat the ones who come up with the idea. But blaming coaches for direct orders etc. Okay sure. President of BWF signed off on all major decisions right? Therefore, President of BWF MUST resign after this. Changes must be made right?

Originally Posted by cobalt

Yes, ban them all. Why not?

For the players:
If you cannot show integrity, you deserve to live with the consequences. You live by the sword, you die by the sword. When you swim with the sharks, you are either a shark or shark-food. You have a choice: get out of the water. Your pride or your integrity.

For the coaches:
Everything the players do on court is your responsibility. You are answerable. You live by the sword, you die by the sword. You make the decisions and the strategies, you are answerable for them. You have a choice: show integrity even in the face of intimidation. If you do as was done unto you, you will face the same consequences. Your pride or your integrity.

All of them chose pride, ego, greed, arrogance, believing they could to some extent get away with it. They players paid the price for the decisions made by their coaches. Now it's time for the coaches to go down.

It's up to the BWF to make sure the ones who ordered the play don't escape.

And right now, it's up to the BWF to make the long overdue transition into the professional world of sports, as a tough, professional association run by tough professionals with integrity: a tough association we would all be proud of. Now, that would be a change!

Nothing about anything was right. The only real lesson I learned here is that you can still tank or not try. You just can't be THAT obvious about it. Or if you are going to make such a ruling, you must set out effort level, how MUCH do you have to try, and scope it over all the events and tournaments. I'm looking at you Taufik and all the high level players. No more backhands and having fun! You have to TRY!

Originally Posted by thunder.tw

Fair question. I'll throw a few guesses (bear in mind these aren't meant as justification or excuses)

1. It's soccer, who can tell one 90 min period of boredom from one contrived 90 min period of boredom.

2. There is a long and proud tradition in soccer of 'playing not to lose' rather than playing to win. Often resulting in 90 mins of 'keep away'.

3. Soccer is the most popular game on the planet. It's unlikely that the actions of the Japanese (women's team no less) is going to have much effect on the popularity or image of soccer as a sport.

4. It's the Japan's women's team. For a badminton analog imagine Canada throwing a doubles match to Australia. Can't really see much of a stir resulting. Now imagine Brazil and Argentina fixing a soccer match in the Olympics.

5. For this to be even a parallel to what happened in Badminton you would need to have seen Japan upon scoring a goal follow up equalizing by kicking the ball into their own goal. At least the Japanese managed to under perform without making a mockery of the game.

6. Who cares about soccer. I could probably dredge up better examples of poor sportsmanship/cheating in Olympic history. Would me doing so excuse the actions of the WD players? Is anything ok as long as you can sight a worse example?

I am an observer and see these news. It's a real shame on badminton. Especially the top executive.
Please support your own country to try their best whenever they play. Walkovers and giving points away is very unprofessional. Image tarnished.

Who is this Lund guy? Shame on him. Shame on China for being the first culprit to initiate this also.

International Soccer, like the World Cup, will play the pool games at the same time so you won't know for sure who you play if you win or lose, so that this doesn't happen. It happend with Germany and someone before where both teams got who they wanted with a tie and they did play keep away for 90 minutes. Everyone said that was real bad and from then on they played at the same time from then on.
On ESPN Radio today SVP said it that losing on purpose was a smart move to play weaker players in the next round. If your goal is to advance, it is difficult to argue against.
Winning should always give you a better chance to advance. If a lot of players lookat at it different, whomever set it up should be to blame not the players.

It is like, right before the NBA Playoffs (to a lesser extent soccer, statistically upsets are higher, luck plays its hand a bit more) some teams lose to get better seeding or purposely lose to avoid more dangerous teams thereby effectively paving an easier on the way.

Those who put the blame squarely on BWF are missing the point. Whatever system you put in place there would always be people who cheat and try to beat the system. The problem is not the system or format but lack of integrity and ultra nationalism of the cheaters.

Instead of condemning the cheaters, players, coaches and national associations we are condemning the watchers.

Someone once said that in order to be the best, you must defeat the best. It is no point one strategies to meet easy opponent in the earlier rounds, if you are the best in the world you will beat any opponent tough or easy long the way.

Those who put the blame squarely on BWF are missing the point. Whatever system you put in place there would always be people who cheat and try to beat the system. The problem is not the system or format but lack of integrity and ultra nationalism of the cheaters.

Instead of condemning the cheaters, players, coaches and national associations we are condemning the watchers.

These cheaters have no love for badminton.

I am glad the IOC have come out hard on these cheats. BRAVO!!!!!!

The players/coaches are far from perfect. However, BWF is to be blamed because they are the one with power. They created a system which (potentially) reward people for losing (or using your term: cheating), and they are well aware of that! (or they are just simply stupid). On top of that, for so long this similar kind of behavior has never been punished by BWF.

It's sad that probably BWF will get away with this by solely blaming the players. I read somewhere that they even got praised by IOC for being strict...

we cannot satisfy the best of both world...now those siding their fav players and country will say BWF and IOC are liable for coming out with this "stupid" grouping system...hence allowing room for manipulating....like some already openly admit that they took advantage out of it.... but if BWF and IOC use knockout stage from the beginning, some might not happy when they get knocked out in the 1st RD.. just take an example, if YY/WXL "unfortunately" lost to pair from RUS in the 1st RD, that's it ..bye-bye to them.....can any of the players whinned about how hard they trained for the past and get knockout by one worst performance and no second chance for them??

BWF and IOC set the rules....right or wrong, the players should at least try their best .....they are bound by the rules....once you entered, you must follow and dont complain later

To put things into perspective, most voters are voicing out for both players and BWF to change. No use just having one party solely to be blamed. If you truly want change for the betterment of badminton, then why not both parties go hand in hand? True, the players themselves are at fault, but majority of votes here are not just saying BWF is the one and only 'ENABLER' (for lack of a better term). Majority says both are at fault. Both. So those who say players are at fault, correct. But to say BWF has nothing to do with it? Pls,. After this, I should say, there will be some pressure on BWF whether to continue with round robin. Even if they decide not to do away with round robin, there will be pressure. And that says the role and responsibility that BWF carries. So stop putting the fault on just ONE(1) party alone. Everyone has a role to play.
It should be noted that the round robin was implemented because of a major reason to have the weaker countries have more participation and not feel left out by always being whitewashed. I guess, the good intention led to a bigger devil.

While the outright DQ is what I champion for, the hope for format restructuring should be on the horizon soon. If you think DQ alone is sufficient enough to remediate and cure, think again. DQ though brings the cane to the buttocks, it also causes embarrassment and unwanted negative attention to the sport, as mentioned by plenty!

The players/coaches are far from perfect. However, BWF is to be blamed because they are the one with power. They created a system which (potentially) reward people for losing (or using your term: cheating), and they are well aware of that! (or they are just simply stupid). On top of that, for so long this similar kind of behavior has never been punished by BWF.

It's sad that probably BWF will get away with this by solely blaming the players. I read somewhere that they even got praised by IOC for being strict...

BWF just wants to ride on this and be praised for their actions

Simply because they have the power. The countries can't do anything about it, not even LYB

for those who think the round robin system is the problem which caused the foul play
this is like blaming people for too rich to get robbed or blaming people for too pretty to be raped.
no?

No. That's really poor analogy.

A more suitable analogy would be:
Students are cheating because they are encourage to do so (no punishment whatsoever for cheater). If a student is not very bright and doesn't cheat, they will not be accepted at certain school/university because other students which also are not very bright are cheating as well. Are they innocent? No. However, they are not the only one that can be blamed.

This is really very bad publicity for badminton.
BWF fought so hard to get it played as an official Olympic Sport event, and this super negative publicity has to happen.
The whole world watches this grand 'once every 4 years' event, and the Best all aspires to play in the Olympics, and the playing of these 4 pairs really destroyed years of hard work in 1 day.

Badminton is fighting hard to get 'big' sponsors from Europe and USA, and the London Olympic is one of the best avenue to showcase what badminton has to offer, I guess now with this catastropic happening, it may have the reverse effect.